sought bread by all the methods employed by people who are in reduced
circumstances! Fruitless labor! There are a hundred thousand people in
Paris who have seen better days. No matter! He gave proofs of undaunted
energy. He gave lessons, and copied documents for a lawyer. He made
his appearance in a new character almost every day, and left no means
untried to earn an honest livelihood. At last he obtained employment
from a well-known astronomer, the Baron Moser, and spent his days in
solving bewildering and intricate problems, at the rate of a hundred
francs a month.

But a season of discouragement came. After five years of constant toil,
he found himself at the same point from which he had started. He was
nearly crazed with rage and disappointment when he recapitulated his
blighted hopes, his fruitless efforts, and the insults he had endured.
The past had been sad, the present was intolerable, the future
threatened to be terrible. Condemned to constant privations, he tried to
escape from the horrors of his real life by taking refuge in dreams.

Alone in his garret, after a day of unremitting toil, assailed by the
thousand longings of youth, Lecoq endeavored to devise some means of
suddenly making himself rich. All reasonable methods being beyond his
reach, it was not long before he was engaged in devising the worst
expedients. In short, this naturally moral and honest young man spent
much of his time in perpetrating--in fancy--the most abominable crimes.
Sometimes he himself was frightened by the work of his imagination: for
an hour of recklessness might suffice to make him pass from the idea
to the fact, from theory to practise. This is the case with all
monomaniacs; an hour comes in which the strange conceptions that have
filled their brains can be no longer held in check.